I very rarely, ever ever, write a review for a game anywhere and I think this is my first on steam but I had to for this game.

This is a really, really good early access launch. Pros/Cons

Pros- FPS with RPG, the idea of it being guerrilla warfare you are fighting is excellent. You are not starting off with a standing army of thousands with combined arms and a massive checkbook to spend

- The FPS fights are interesting with the allowance to command troops in battle with the map

- Firearms are pretty decent, it takes skill and patience to drop someone at a distance Muzzle flash keeps you from spraying and praying. Accuracy deminishes proper at long distance shots for small arms and long barrel rifles

- The AI on the country map seem pretty solid. They will attack you if they sense they can defeat you

-Controls, Information and directions on how to play are well thought out and easy

Cons/well not really since it is early acess

-No compass, sometimes hard to orientate yourself in combat

-AI seems to be laser accurate at times

-FPS maps for fighting outside the town are all the same style of foilage and terrain

-No vehicles, some will be useful and make sense. I'm not talking a Abrams but some SUV's and Technicals would be fine

-No starting village of your own, you will need to grind a bit fighting soft enemies to make enough to build a army ready to fight for a city

-No quests yet

-Not sure how my army resupplies after a fight

I could go on and on for both pro and con but nobody will read it I'd bet. This is a really fun game, I am enjoying the hell out of it and hope to help with suggestions I think will help after years of FPS and RPG games I've played.

Last Edit: 10th Feb 2018 23:08 - Updated to stay true after updatesNOTE: It's been a while since I got the time to play. The many of the bugs I've listed in the review are likely fixed. I'll try to find the time to play and update this when pos.

An interesting title that clearly gets a lot of its inspiration from Mount & Blade.

Mount & Blade similarities

I can predict this game will be popular among M&B players and as already stated in many reviews, this is essentially Mount & Gun. However, none of the pointless one-liner reviews really go into why; so I'll tell you why.

Just like in Mount and Blade you;

Command an army

Grow the army through Leadership (and Commanding) skills

Have Morale

Have daily payments to make to the troops

Upgrade said troops when enough experience is gained

Has troop trees - some of which can branch off into other trees

Have a world map made of towns

Units show as a single unit with a number representing total unit count (World map)

The game is played in pretty much the exact same way as Mount & Blade would be with some very minor exceptions. You'll find yourself taking your first few recruits out to kill a few bandits for some basic loot, money and experience. Sell the goods, upgrade your weapon, buy some armor, upgrade your troops, rinse, repeat several times, etc etc. Alternatively, purchase goods from a trader and sell to another. Items in demand in that particular store have green "Demand" text over them.

Freeman as an FPS

Freeman as an FPS is pretty solid. The firefights mostly take place over a distance. Guns have their inaccuracies, meaning you'll see plenty of dust kicking up around you from enemy fire and likewise looking down range at the enemy. It creates a pretty good feeling of a drawn out firefight.There are the usual three stances you would expect in a shooter;

Standing

Kneeling

Prone

and the guns can switch firemodes with the V key.

Freeman as a tactical game

The game is bland as a tactical game. Not really in a bad way, just the tactical features are somewhat limited.A battle map can be opened during combat with the M key, which allows you to move your units to other locations by simply clicking the unit you want to move and double clicking the location to move them to. Double clicking multiple locations will queue up movements allowing you to move a unit around a known enemy location for flanking and any waypoint can be dragged and moved to alter the route at any time.When moving, you can use either Charge to run, or Proceed with caution to traverse the waypoints whilst engaging where possible or taking cover upon receiving fire.There are also Fire at will, Cease fire and Follow me commands.Pressing P on the overworld map will allow you to Pause for tactical thinking.

Game aspects

VisualGraphically the game is acceptable. The overworld map, much like M&B is much lower quality than the actual 3D scenes. This is no big deal though as the 3D scenes are where the details count. There are currently no real graphical settings except the basics. These are broken down into;

Screen Resolution

Graphical Quality

Shadow Quality

Grass distance

Fullscreen

There are no custom graphics options that allow individual tweaking of features such as AA, Depth of Field etc.The graphics I'd say are slightly better than M&B but remain similar to it.

AudioAudio needs some tweaking in places. The combat sounds are acceptable. Snipers even giving a decent crack over distance. My biggest gripe with the audio is it can be very hollow and has too much reverb. Footsteps for instance sound like they were recorded in an empty hallway, as do your Squads radio activity.The game could use a little atmospheric sound also, such as wind blowing through the trees and a few chirpy birds. Right now the only sounds are Footsteps, gun fire and radio activity.

Enemy A.IThe titles store page boasts that "You will be challenged by highly intelligent AI that is capable of advanced tactical maneuvers such as flanking, surrounding and even fake retreating" and I admit to being very skeptical of the statement.Actually though, it delivers. The enemy I have faced thus far (Bandits) have shown the following maneuvers in action;

Flanking - I have seen multiple times a squad heading off to try and a flank whilst my squads have been occupied surpressing the main force. You really need to be observant to catch these guys as most of the time I only spotted them because they were on the a hill and the blue sky behind them made the movement catch my eye.

Sorrounding - I have taken fire from three directions. This happens less if you spread out your sqauds a bit to prevent any enemy getting behind you.

Taking cover - The enemies will use trees and rocks for cover.... a lot.

Accurate firing - The enemy rarely fire from standing position. They will almost always crouch or go prone where possible making them even harder to hit.

React - When spotting an enemy squad moving in the distance I'll often fire off a few shots for fun. They reacted instantly, dropping to prone and breaking for cover.

I've not yet witnessed fake retreating but the A.I for an early access title is impressive and probably one of the titles best strengths thus far.

Bugs

Fortunately I have only encountered one bug thus far. But it is quite the serious one.During two battles my gun has simply stopped working. The mag is full, but pulling the trigger does nothing. This leaves you completely useless and at the mercy of your Sqaud to do the dirty work. This started happening when I bought the AR, which is now the gun I've used the most so I am unsure as to whether the problem is with the AR, 5.56 ammo or I just didn't use the AKS (7.62) long enough to notice is what a global issue. - Developer fixed in 0.11

Annoyances

There are a couple of annoyances with this title. For instance;

There is no graphical indicator for which firemode your weapon is. A simple one bullet, three bullet and five bullet hud icon would do nicely here - Implemented

Your chosen firemode isn't persistent. I prefer to use single fire mode for more accurate firing. Particularly as ammo is a concern. However this seems to reset to full auto with every battle.

When the last squad flees the battle instantly ends, even if the very last man is close and you're about to cap his♥♥♥♥♥ Nope. This is especially annoying if more than one unit is left because you will re-engage the routed squad on the world map, only to kill another single unit for the remaining squad to once again insta-flee.

The game can be a little janky on the world map when holding space (time speed up) in that it can jitty, or on the odd occasion your unit will stop moving, but keep playing the movement animation. You'll have to click to move again if this happens.

There is no indicator of a gun having a scope or not. I am using the AR, which the graphic shows as not having a Scope on it, but actually does - Weapon customization implemented, scopes are now seperate and have their own slot

I will flesh out this review as I play more and experience more of the game.

Not to mention the devs are extremely close with the community on their discord, report a bug, and there is a big chance and dev will personally acknowledge your report and make sure it's fixed in the next update.

*The gunplay is solid and statisfying, it's the main thing that keeps drawing me towards playing.*Strategy isn't a small part of this game, order a squad in an exposed spot and they can get mowed down within seconds but a carefully planned flank can get rewarded with alot kills. And yes you can actually apply guerrila style hit and run tactics against bigger armies, knowing when to retreat to fight another day is extremely important if you don't want to lose your army.*Combat is tense, just like your soldiers, standing in the open for a few seconds too long can mean getting mowed down, AI is suprisingly smart and will often try to flank you with mulitiple squads.Retreating is some of the tensest things of this game, you'll lose alot of soldiers and there will be alot of dirt spatting up all around you.*Features on the world map are limited but fun, I'm sure they'll add more in the future.

According to the devs Co-op will be very likely implemented and multiplayer will probably be added after single player is improved an optimized.

In short this game is the same kind of addicting as m&b: warband, and if you like fps combined with RTS, this is absolutely your game.

(Please note: I never expected anyone to read this review as there are 1000's of reviews. The views here are simply my opinion. If you think I'm completely wrong in something I describe here, then feel free to write your own review. I have no control over how the reviews are shown)

I own a lot of games and I almost never leave reviews. But sometimes a game, and it's devs, are so good or so bad to almost force me to write a review. This is one of those cases.

This game is a perfect example of AMAZING devs and that Early Access can work. This is practically a new sub genre that has never really been done before. (if you disagree, I don't care.) Every single update brings real changes that are almost always for the better. Great Dev Communication.

Although it does need to be noted it is early days.

Please please please, keep it up!

I would also love it if you created some kind of completely optional Founder "DLC" (That at most gives you some kind of cosmetic or a digital art book or something ) so people who want to give you more money, can.